By Compiled by Brian Reynolds

on June 30, 2014 5:58 PM

The Supreme Court ruled that some corporations can hold religious objections that allow them to opt out of the new health law requirement that they cover contraceptives for women. The justices' 5-4 decision is the first time that the high court has ruled that profit-seeking businesses can hold religious views under federal law. And it means the Obama administration must search for a different way of providing free contraception to women who are covered under objecting companies' health insurance plans.

The Supreme Court dealt a blow to public sector unions, ruling that thousands of home health care workers in Illinois cannot be required to pay fees that help cover the union's costs of collective bargaining. In a 5-4 split along ideological lines, the justices said the practice violates the First Amendment rights of nonmembers who disagree with the positions that unions take. The ruling is a setback for labor unions that have bolstered their ranks — and bank accounts — in Illinois and other states by signing up hundreds of thousands of in-home care workers. It could lead to an exodus of members who will have little incentive to pay dues if nonmembers don't have to share the burden of union costs.

The Supreme Court limited the president's power to fill high-level administration posts with temporary appointments, ruling in favor of Senate Republicans in their partisan clash with President Barack Obama. But the justices stopped short of a more sweeping decision that would have effectively ended a president's power to make recess appointments when the Senate takes a break.

The Supreme Court unanimously struck down the 35-foot protest-free zone outside abortion clinics in Massachusetts, declaring it an unconstitutional restraint on the free-speech rights of protesters.

Authorities have less intrusive ways to deal with potential confrontations or other problems that can arise outside clinics, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. Roberts noted that most of the problems reported by police and the clinics in Massachusetts occurred outside a single Planned Parenthood facility in Boston, and only on Saturdays when the largest crowds typically gather.

The Supreme Court ruled that a startup Internet company has to pay broadcasters when it takes television programs from the airwaves and allows subscribers to watch them on smartphones and other portable devices. The justices said by a 6-3 vote that Aereo Inc. is violating the broadcasters' copyrights by taking the signals for free. The ruling preserves the ability of the television networks to collect huge fees from cable and satellite systems that transmit their programming. Had services such as Aereo been allowed to operate without paying for the programming, more people might have ditched their cable services, meaning broadcasters would have been able to charge less for the right to transmit their programs.

The Supreme Court sided with bank employees in a lawsuit against Fifth Third Bancorp that accused management of irresponsibly investing employee retirement money in the bank's then-failing stock. The unanimous ruling came in a case involving a retirement fund invested primarily in the bank's stock.

The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the broad application of a federal anti-bank fraud law. The justices sustained the bank fraud conviction of Kevin Loughrin, who used stolen checks as part of a scheme to take merchandise and cash from a Target store in Utah. Using checks from a bank brought Loughrin under the bank fraud statute. He was sentenced to three years in prison.

The Supreme Court largely left intact the Obama administration's only existing program to limit power plant and factory emissions of the gases blamed for global warming. But a divided court also rebuked environmental regulators for taking too much authority into their own hands without congressional approval. The justices said in a 5-4 vote along ideological lines that the Environmental Protection Agency cannot apply a permitting provision of the Clean Air Act to new and expanded power plants, refineries and factories solely because they emit greenhouse gases.

The Supreme Court made it tougher for investors to join together to sue corporations for securities fraud, a decision that could curb the number of multimillion-dollar legal settlements companies pay out each year. But the unanimous ruling was only a modest step. It stopped short of tossing out a quarter-century-old legal theory that might have ended securities class action lawsuits altogether. Only three of the nine justices said they would have gone that far.

A divided Supreme Court sided with gun control groups and the Obama administration, ruling that the federal government can strictly enforce laws that ban a "straw" purchaser from buying a gun for someone else. The justices ruled 5-4 that the law applied to a Virginia man who bought a gun with the intention of transferring it to his uncle in Pennsylvania — even though the uncle is not prohibited from owning firearms. The decision split the court along familiar ideological lines, though it has no direct bearing on the Second Amendment right to own guns.